Tag Archives: Dungeon Master

David and I play D&D with a group of 6 people including the DM. One of the people does not live in the same state as us so we have been trying various ways to make sure that they can still play. For a long while we were using Google Hangouts with some decent success and having multiple computers set up to show various angles. One for the camera to the whole group and to show us the distant player and then others for the DM and to show the board for battles. This was often complicated and we were having to move the board camera around so that the person at a distance to see where their character was in relation to everyone else. This worked, but was not a great system.

Recently, the DM discovered a service called Roll20 that allowed you to have a map where players could actually move their pieces and the DM could move the enemies all online. This at first just seemed like a great way to be able to do the combat or additional map features, but as we looked more into it the service is much, much more. Roll 20 allows for a completely online gaming session including video chat, group and private text chat, shared map, extra DM features, saved handouts, saved character sheets, and more. Now the base offerings are free and there are some added features if you want to go with a paid subscription. The base offerings are great for a single campaign, but some of the paid features might be worth it for someone investing in multiple gaming platforms. The greatest thing is that Roll 20 is for any d20 based gaming system and not just D&D specific. Continue reading →

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Magic is a great part of fantasy. As much as I am a Science Fiction guy, and the definition I work off of does not allow for magic (check out the definition here), the escapism of Fantasy (check out the definition here) can be a lot of fun. Fantasy and that level of escapism better lend themselves to gaming, because in gaming you can work outside of the bounds of reality, outside of our normal physics.

A fun sort of thought experiment, here I have a list of the ten best spells – with the thought being that you’re coming up with a spellbook and using them all together. Many spells or spell effects are duplicated, in various ways and various manners, in all sorts of books, video games, and tabletop games. So many of these have a variety of analogs, and are a good bet in most of these circumstances.

There are some spells, of course, that are a bit much. Are almost too powerful for regular sorts of use. The king of these spells is the Wish spell, from D&D – basically, it does what all these spells do, and just about anything else. It’s a plot-changer, game-breaker, and is a bit too much. So maybe it’s better to say, these are the tops of spell types, the best for use, for your gaming wizard or fictional mage of choice! Continue reading →

I know some will start reading this article and think “blasphemous,” Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) has no place in the classroom (and for some, even the home). But I ask you to hear me out. I, myself, am a newbie to Dungeons and Dragons and started off skeptical of really enjoying it, let alone seeing any benefit to it outside of becoming more nerdy than I already am. (Or is it geeky – I still haven’t quite got the distinctions down.)